Opinion

GET READY FOR THE NEXT SENATE CIRCUS

DON’T expect last week’s 47-8 state Senate vote to renew mayoral control of city schools to mark a return to normalcy for the coup-scarred chamber. Neophyte Democratic leader John Sampson presides over an anarchic, faction-riven conference that could still disintegrate over the next contentious issue.

And this is the body that now has to confirm an MTA chairman and join the governor and Assembly to close a $2.1 billion mid-year budget gap.

Alas, there’s scant evidence that the coup and its aftermath have shocked the Senate into something resembling responsible governance. Most signs indicate that the chaos has only made things worse.

Problem No. 1: The Democratic conference, which never really came together after taking the majority last November, is now stratified into roughly four factions:

There’s the powerful coalition of black senators led by Sampson; six to 10 outer- borough/suburban/Upstate whites in conservative districts who look to Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein; Manhattan-based white liberals and their allies — and, of course, the Four Amigos, led by double-turncoat and now-Majority Leader Pedro Espada.

The bad blood that surfaced during the coup — when rumors of defections were constant — has only intensified since.

Witness Queens Sen. Shirley Huntley, of Sampson’s faction, who last week questioned a fellow Democrat’s manhood on the Senate floor: “He seems to know so much about children, which is amazing since he’s barely an adult himself,” she said of liberal freshman Daniel Squadron, who had just spoken for the mayoral-control bill.

And that’s nothing compared to what senators say about each other in private.

Problem No. 2: The Senate’s chaos is mirrored in its leadership.

The deal that returned Espada to the fold made him majority leader while ex-Majority Leader Malcolm Smith kept the constitutional function of Senate president and Sampson got the new post of “conference leader.”

Sampson is recognized as de facto top dog, and conventional wisdom holds that Smith will fade away while Espada contents himself with his title and perks. But none of this has been made explicit, weakening Sampson’s hold on the levers of power — especially the conference’s central staff.

Sources say that staffers now habitually cover themselves by getting multiple leaders to sign off on their instructions — a reasonable precaution if you don’t know who your boss will be in six months.

Majority press releases come affixed with contact information for spokesmen for all three leaders, meaning that the communications office is far from integrated.

Tellingly, Sampson’s office wouldn’t even respond to queries on whether he has final authority over new staff hires.

The biggest wild card is Espada. He surely won at least some say over majority staffing when he flipped back; he’s already brought on loyalist Steve Pigeon as general counsel. This gives him eyes, ears and leverage — and while it’s not yet clear what he intends to do with that, it leaves Sampson walking on eggshells.

Some paint this chaos as a virtue — highlighting just-passed rules reforms meant to “democratize” the chamber and end back-room dealing. But that’s like praising a car crash for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Someone from the Senate will be negotiating with Gov. Paterson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver next month over how to plug that $2.1 billion deficit. If Sampson can’t speak authoritatively for his conference by then, it’ll be paralysis all over again.

And Sampson doesn’t actually have to do anything for the Senate to fall apart — just let nature take its course. The Democrats’ majority, after all, is a razor-thin 32-30 — meaning that any single senator could hold up the whole chamber.

Indeed, Senate Democrats were setting new standards for infighting and dysfunction even before the coup. Take the MTA bailout in May: Then-leader Smith offered almost no leadership for months as a handful of senators scuttled a unified rescue plan — and the final agreement didn’t even finance half the agency’s capital needs.

The defection and return of Espada and Sen. Hiram Monserrate offered further proof that brazenness will be rewarded.

And Sampson so far has done little to correct that impression.

He won some praise for brokering the mayoral-control deal — but likely more relevant is the way he allowed a handful of senators with a personal animus against Mayor Bloomberg to stall the process for weeks after he had promised a floor vote.

It’s said that he wanted to give the holdouts — notably, Sens. Eric Adams, Bill Perkins and Kevin Parker, members of his own black caucus — room to “vent” before he put the bill on the floor.

But intense pressure to renew mayoral control was coming from Bloomberg, Silver, the teachers union and a good half (at least) of Sampson’s own conference. Failure to pass it would’ve represented the Senate’s — and, by extension, Sampson’s — inability to do anything.

So: How will Sampson hold up against the forces of chaos when the stakes (for him) are slightly lower?

It doesn’t look good. Sure, he may still evolve into a capable leader. The leadership’s authority over pork, for one, remains a powerful weapon. But the forces of entropy arrayed against Sampson are awfully strong — if he even wants to fight them.

The smart money’s on another blow-up.

jwilson@nypost.com